CULTURECOUTURE

WATERcharity: water page 3

Traveling the World at Home page 8

Volume III, Issue No. 1FALL 2011 / WINTER 2012

world water issues pages 4&5

TABLE ofCONTENTS

page 2

page 3

page 4&5

Want to listen in on what’s happening in the music world? Check out Maggie Ann Re’s (’13) review of some of the new albums that just came out! Also, a fall playlist to fall in love with.

An incredible story told by Scott Harrison of charity:water about one community’s inspirational struggle for clean water.

Editor’s Letter

page 6&7

page 8

page 9Want to better understand the world’s water crisis beyond the statistics and begin to make your own difference? Natalie Kobsa-Mark (’12) addresses the water issue, focusing on the situation of one slum

in Kenya.

Check out our main photo shoot, “Making a Splash,” that celebrates both water and life.

Ever dreamt of traveling the world? Learn how you can in the comfort of Southern California in this account by Natasha Sakraney (’12).

Second-generation Chinese immigrant Molly Wang (’13) describes the distinctive beauty of Chinese culture and fashion.

For the new Culture Couture team (Carlyn Kane, Elizabeth Frost, Maggie Ann Re, and myself), green is the new black—and we want this trend to stay. While this magazine serves as our means to express our passions for culture, fashion, and art in the local and global communities, we have realized the major environmental concerns that are present in every culture. To do our small part, we now print Culture Couture on recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. However, we want to have a greater role in the environmental struggle and have thus decided to focus on water (the theme of this season’s issue of CC). In this way, blue is another trend we are constantly keeping in mind. Unfortunately, for many societies, this entails more of a brown. Every single person

on the planet needs clean water, but about one-sixth of the world’s population does not have it. By donating 100% of our profits to charity: water (learn more about the incredible organization on page 3!), we hope to make a splash.

Xʼs, Oʼs, and H2Oʼs,

JennaAll written work within this publication that is not the property of a third party is the property of Culture Couture and may only be used with the expressed and written permission of both the Editor and the Author of the work.Views and opinions within this publication do not reflect the views of Sage Hill School. Culture Couture is independently run and published by individual members of the Student Body.

Editor-in-Chief: Jenna Shapiro; Assistant Editor: Elizabeth Frost; Executive Contributors: Carlyn Kane and Maggie Ann Re; Pictures Contributed By: charity:water, consequenceofsound.net, altpress.com; google.com; Models: Carlyn Kane, Elizabeth Frost, Jenna Shapiro, Natalie Singerella, Alex Stimpson, and Sanna Taskinen; Make-Up: Elizabeth Frost

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FALL MUSIC GUIDE

Feist, Metals 6.5/10How you know her: The Reminder, “1234”Leslie Feist is back with her calming guitars and haunting vocals in Metals. This album’s for those looking for some soothing tunes with a deep, rich sound that contrasts much of Feist’s more popular upbeat material. I personally wasn’t drawn back to any particular track—or even the album as a whole—but it will certainly be added to my list of go-to chill songs.Top Tracks: “How Come You Never Go There,” “The Bad In Each Other”Recommended: St. Vincent, Strange Mercy

Sublime With Rome, Yours Truly 8.5/10How you know them: Original Sublime members + Rome Ramirez (in “Lay Me Down” by The Dirty Heads)Dedicated to past Sublime lead singer Bradley Nowell, Yours Truly shows the Sublime sound isn’t going to fizzle out anytime soon. Familiar reggae-rock sound and catchy lyrics pull together a fully cohesive yet exciting album that will bring hardcore Sublime fans back to the 90s while surely delighting any newcomer.Top Tracks: “Panic,” “Take It Or Leave It,” and “PCH” for the localsRecommended: Airborne Toxic Event, All at Once

Writer’s Pick:

New Releases:

Young the Giant, Young the Giant released October 2010 9.5/10How you know them: MTV VMAs, “Cough Syrup”These Irvine natives are shaking up the rock scene with their clean California sound. Lead by Sameer Gadhia’s ultra-strong and soulful vocals, this group masters not only catchy, meaningful lyrics but also captivating guitar riffs that will convert any pop-lover into a rocker. Also look out for their cover of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” because you won’t want to miss who I believe is the only male vocalist who can successfully power through an Adele song without sounding ridiculous.Top Tracks: “Cough Syrup,” “My Body,” “Your Side,” heck, just listen to the whole thingRecommended: Arctic Monkeys, Suck It And See; Cage the Elephant, Cage the Elephant

Coldplay, Mylo Xyloto, 10/25

The Decemberists, Long Live The King, 11/1

Florence + The Machine, Ceremonials, 11/1

Noel Gallagher (from Oasis), Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, 11/8

Childish Gambino, Camp, 11/15

The Black Keys, El Camino, 12/6

Look Out For:

A chill mix tape with an edge for when you watch the leaves fall…if you happen to travel somewhere where they do

1. Ghosting – Freelance Whales2. Michicant – Bon Iver3. Wasted Daylight - Stars4. Will Do – TV On The Radio5. Oh No – Andrew Bird6. Cheerleader - Grizzly Bear 7. Cornerstone - Arctic Monkeys8. Meeting Place – The Last Shadow Puppets9. Zebra – Beach House10. Islands – Young The Giant11. Never Heal Myself –

Cults

f a l l playlist

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by Maggie Ann Re (’13)

I jumped back but too late, as coconut juice splashed all over my jeans. The upside-down transfer from coconut to steel cup hadn’t factored in the volume differential.

I sat on a plastic chair in the Engreda village Baptist church, tucked away in the rural hills of Eastern India. Men and women of the community had gathered here to thank us for funding a piped water system that brought clean and safe drinking water down from a new well in the mountains.41-year-old Junash was the one that spilled on me, but I didn’t mind, and drank two cups of the warm juice. A few minutes earlier, he’d made a speech about what happened here.

I learned that the 567 residents of Engreda had big problems with water. Their primary source for years had been a polluted stream in the valley beneath the village, which I saw a few moments later.“In the stream, we would remove a little bit of sand, and the water would ooze out into it. We used to drink that, and the children and adults used to get diarrhea,” Junesh said. “We are poor. Whatever savings we had, we spent on curing our waterborne diseases. The poor remained poor.”

Not anymore. Through last year’s partnership with retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, more than $540,000 was raised – enough for 100 water projects in Honduras, India and Ethiopia.

Engreda was one of those projects, but the water running from their taps came at a higher price than our funding. The people had petitioned our implementing partner Gram Vikas to help them with the water problem. But before bringing clean water to Engreda, Gram Vikas asked villagers to give a year of their time to construct toilets and bathing rooms on faith.

For over 30 years, Gram Vikas has taken a unique approach to development work. For them, sanitation is the key to good health, and community participation is the key to sustainability. “Sanitation” meant toilets and showers here; "participation" - a year plus of hard work.Junash said Gram Vikas’s proposal was initially met with some resistance, as each of Engreda’s 130 families would have to do a “lot of work” that would cost “a lot of money.”

For Gram Vikas to work in a community, 100% of the people must agree and contribute, and after a short time, they did. But their involvement didn’t stop there. After all 130 toilets and bathing rooms were constructed, community members then helped lay pipe from the well Gram Vikas constructed high in the mountain near a spring. It was tough going. Villagers spent more than a month breaking stones in the rocky ground, but beamed with pride at their achievement.

I sometimes hear people accuse those in the developing world of laziness. But the more I travel, the more I find that’s just not true. Communities like Engreda give what they have, even if it’s not the cold cash that comes easier for many of us.

O r i s s a , I n d i a . 5 8 , 3 4 5 H o u r s F o r C l e a n Wa t e r .

Written on the wall next to our contribution was theirs, and while not in the form of a check, its value far exceeded ours.

The stone, bricks, gravel and labor the people of Engreda added to the project came to $19,851. At least half of that was sweat equity and calculated at the going rate of 17 cents an hour. For comparison, if their labor took place in the United States, where hourly minimum wage is $6.55, they’d have contributed more than $364,000 of labor value - 58,345 hours.

In that light, charity: w a t e r ’s $ 7 , 8 2 2 contribution for the hard costs of piping, taps and the water tower was a steal. Back at the Gram Vikas compound later that evening, the project coordinator smiled when she learned I’d visited E n g re d a . “ Ye s , they’re very happy there. They tell us the water tastes better than coconut milk.” I had to agree.

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by Scott Harrison, charity: water

4(% 7/2,$’3 7!4%2 by Natalie Kobsa-Mark (’12)

“An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day,” states the United Nations Human Development Report. This is very scary considering most of us take longer than five minutes to shower and many of us have possibly never been to a slum, let alone to a developing nation. I doubt most of us can even comprehend what it is like to live without access to clean water for a day, since it is such an ubiquitous part of our lifestyles here in Orange County. Yet one billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and another 2.5 billion lack sanitation as a result. Since simply stating numbers and facts is often hard to internalize, let’s take a glimpse of water conditions in Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya—the third largest slum in the world and the largest in Africa.

Kibera is a tightly-packed slum in the city of Nairobi containing nine villages and approximately 200,000 residents. The day starts early for women, who walk for miles to distant locations to collect water, returning with heavy water jugs. However the water they collect is not clear; it is a murky brown color. This water

frequently comes into contact with human excrement and sewerage, resulting in contaminated water that contains disease pathogens. Although this water is naturally considered undrinkable to our American ears, it is the only water available in their area. Unclean water, as a result of lack of adequate sanitation, is sadly the number one killer of children in Kibera and worldwide. The most common illness caught among children from undrinkable water is diarrhea, which kills 30,000 children in Nairobi and 1.8 million children around the world annually.

This description of Kibera is not meant to belittle the region’s unfortunate condition. Of course not all developing nations have conditions as harsh as these, and it would be naive to think that developed nations do not have slums of their own. This description is presented to shed light on our and many Americans’ fortune that, when we want to take a shower, we can turn on the spout. When we need to go to the bathroom, we have a toilet to flush our waste down. And when we want a drink of water, we can turn on the faucet. Access to clean water is also something we can easily take for granted and, as a result, we may waste.

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Let us revisit this quote for a moment: “An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.” How is it that Americans do not feel guilty as they take twenty or thirty-minute showers using four or five gallons per minute? How ironic is it that many Americans mistrust the tap water coming from their very own faucets. We, as Americans, have nearly free and unlimited access to as much water as we want, and yet we continue to suspect it of being sub-par. We believe OUR water in the United States is undrinkable and so markets for water bottles and special pH water have skyrocketed. Lastly, how unfortunate is it that dripping taps in rich countries waste more water than is available each day to more than one billion people in the world.

We should be mindful of how lucky we are that we are able to have clean water in our lives. The following are some helpful tips for conserving this precious resource. 1) Start by turning off the sink while you

brush your teeth; it does not make sense in the first place and you can save up to twenty-five gallons a month. 2) Of course, taking shorter showers helps, but the bigger problem to address is to reserve water for the purpose of rinsing off, rather than for keeping the shower hot. And my goodness, 3) you do not need to buy special pH water for your body— tap water is extremely pure and healthy to drink. Sadly to say, our toilet water is cleaner than the water in most developing countries. So the next time we are thirsty, let’s drink with grateful awareness of the clean water we have access to.

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MAKING A SPLASH

Water, a substance easily taken for granted, is the purest component of life. Everyone and everything living needs it. For many, however, water is not so pure--or even attainable. Nearly one billion people worldwide, in fact, are not exposed to clean, drinkable water. It is time to make a splash. This month's Culture Couture focuses on the celebration of water and of life. 100% of our profits go to charity: water, an organization that builds wells in the developing countries where people do not have easy access to water. So wat-er you waiting for? Dive in and help carry out the ripple effect of change.

For more information on charity: water, visit; www.charitywater.org.

To help make a splash, contact Jenna Shapiro at culturecouturemagazine@gmail.com.

This last spring, a group of approximately thirty students elected to participate in a seminar called “Eat, Pray, Shop” at Sage. We visited cultural areas throughout the Orange County and Los Angeles areas to try to get a global perspective while still remaining local. From visiting a traditional Tibetan Buddhist temple to enjoying an all-you-can-eat buffet in Little India in Artesia to shopping in Chinatown, we all had such a wonderful time and realized how rewarding (not to mention delicious) it is to enrich life with cultural experiences.

One of my favorite experiences from our Spring at Sage adventures was actually on the very first day. We visited a Buddhist temple and had traditional Buddhist monks give us a tour. We even went off and found the cutest little Pagoda to take a picture with! Learning about another culture and religion was fascinating and made us all think about how many different ways there are to live our lives. We then continued on to Chinatown in Los Angeles where we gorged ourselves on a delicious meal of dim sum, which includes traditional Chinese style dumplings that are only served at lunch. We then spent an enjoyable afternoon shopping, as well as soaking in the cultural atmosphere of the area.

Another extremely unique experience we had was visiting Little Ethiopia in Los Angeles and enjoying a traditional Ethiopian Meal. We all sat on stools and watched, captivated as our waiters brought out trays and trays of sumptuous and flavorful curries, stews, and meats. We noticed that we had been given absolutely no utensils! We sat around, slightly confused on how to

consume the food. Then our server came out with baskets of pancake-like flatbreads and gave us a demonstration of how to fold the bread up and use it like a scoop to eat the delicious food. I never would have known how to eat Ethiopian food or even known what Ethiopian food was had it not been for this amazing trip.

The experience of traveling around the greater Orange County and Los Angeles area really opened my eyes to how much there is to see just an hour radius from where we live. Everyone should take advantage of the amazing cultural opportunities that come with going to a school like Sage and living in the vibrant and culturally diverse community that exists in southern California.

TravelingHomethe World at

by Natasha Sakraney (’12)

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I am a second-generation Chinese immigrant, which means I am the first generation to be born outside of China (where my family originates) or Taiwan (where most of my relatives live now). However, I am proud to say my family has lost neither our heritage nor our traditions. When I was young, during major Chinese holidays such as the Lunar New Year or the Mid-Autumn Festival, my parents would dress me up in a beautiful silk qípáo (旗袍). I owned three of these

qípáo in pink, white, and red. The modern qípáo, which originated in Shanghai and is known in English as the “mandarin gown,” is a one-piece dress characterized by its form-fitting design and high slit on one side. Many people think of this dress as the most traditional women’s garment in the context of customary Chinese clothing. Several standards of traditional attire exist, however, and drastically differ from each other, most notably among the ethnic minority groups as one travels across China.

Many of the minority groups still wear very characteristic clothing. In 2006, my family and I visited the Hunan province of China, where we met people of an indigenous minority group called the Bái (白族，Báizú).

Tucked away from urban areas, the Báipeople created and maintained an attire that has not been influenced by international fashions. As a result, their traditional clothing bears little dissimilarity with that of their ancestors’. An interesting feature is this group’s high esteem for the color white. They were named such by the Chinese government, with Bái (白) literally meaning

“white.”

The women generally wear white dresses, sleeveless red or blue jackets, embroidered belts, loose trousers, embroidered shoes of white cloth, and gold or silver jewelry. The scarf on a girl’s head, its name translating to “the flower in the wind and the moon on a snowy night,” holds special symbolism. The overall shape is that of

Threadsweaving through

Generations

the moon; embroidered flowers adorn the lower part, and the upper part is white as snow. The tail of the scarf falls down naturally on one shoulder.

Traditional Chinese clothing is outstanding not only in its visible elegance, but also in its interior symbolism. Each and every piece of clothing communicates a vitality of its own. The ancient Chinese associated certain colors with specific seasons: green symbolizes spring, red represents summer, white symbolizes autumn, and black denotes winter. The ancients are also said to have fully developed a system of matching, coordinating, and contrasting colors and shades of apparel. However, the overall characteristics of the garments, as exemplified by the clothing of the Báipeople, can be summarized as distinctive colors, refined artisanship, and ornate detail.

by Molly Wang ’13

Traditional Chinese clothing from the perspective of a second-generation Chinese immigrant

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Women of the Bái group wearing the traditional headdress and attire.

or

“I want everyone to look their best.” - Elizabeth Frost

Whether it’s for an

e v e n i n g o u t or a relaxing

SUMMER DAY,treat yourself to a makeup " " " makeover!

Elizabeth Frost can do your makeup for all occasions or teach you how to do your own

makeup.

“Elizabeth has extreme makeup skills. She compliments everyoneʼs individual features and always makes you look fabulous. Iʼve already reserved her for prom!”" " " " " " - Jenna Shapiro